keep the men happy. Happy men bet. And those men tell their conference directors to “put Baltimore on the schedule again within a couple of years”.

It’s big business…gambling, food, liquor, women and revenue.

Ever been to Las Vegas? Or Atlantic City?

Right. Why re-invent the wheel?

And don’t forget that the magic button will be a revived horse racing product that will no doubt benefit from the millions of dollars being funneled in as part of the state’s blossoming slots revenue.

Build it — and they will come.

Meanwhile, David Cordish and the rest of the slots license owners in Maryland will contribute 9% of their silly money to the effort too. And if Cordish doesn’t want to help, he can take a hike. Let him make his millions at Arundel Mills. He deserves to do that, he ponied up (no pun) the $28 million to get his VLT license — he should reap the rewards. But he also has to at least have the common decency to understand that he now has a vested interest in what happens with horse racing because he became a De facto partner in the business when he dipped his toe in the slots pond.

It’s probably asking too much to get all these people with their ginourmous (not REALLY a word, but fitting) egos to stop getting rich(er) for just one day and sit in a room like grown ass people and figure out a way to make this whole thing copacetic.

Someone in the state has to take this over and get plans for a new facility started.

Who?

I have no idea. Lots of people with Masters degrees, a Porsche and a home that’s too big for them can help make this a reality. Just overpay them like we do with any other state government assignment and they’ll be well on their way to figuring it out.

But someone needs to do it and do it soon.

Maryland’s horse industry died this morning.

As Don Meredith used to sing at the end of Monday Night Football — “turn out the lights…the party’s over…”

It doesn’t matter that horse racing suffered for years in our state and no one (from the government to the people running it to the people who thought they could fix it) could keep it from dying.

What matters now is how do you give birth to another generation of the industry?

Anything else…any other long discussions and arguments and finger pointing about who f**ked up is just a waste of time. EVERYONE involved helped ruin it.

The only thing that will revive it is a new facility in downtown Baltimore. Horse racing isn’t cool anymore because it’s old. Old people run it. Old people bet on it. And they do it in an old facility.

Old isn’t good anymore unless you’re talking about Annette Bening, and she’s only 52.